As I have elsewhere maintained, the
eugenic criterion is the first and last of every measure of reform or
reaction that can be proposed or imagined. Will it make a better race?
Will the consequence be that more of the better stocks, _of both sexes_,
contribute to the composition of future generations? In other words, the
very first thing that the feminist movement must prove is that it is
eugenic. If it be so, its claims are unchallengeable; if it be what may
contrariwise be called _dysgenic_, no arguments in its favour are of any
avail. Yet the present champions of the woman's cause are apparently
unaware that this question exists. They do not know how important their
sex is.
Thinkers in the past have known, and many critics in the present, though
unaware of the eugenic idea, do perceive, that woman can scarcely be
better employed than in the home. Herbert Spencer, notably, argued that
we must not include, in the estimate of a nation's assets, those
activities of woman the development of which is incompatible with
motherhood. To-day, the natural differences between individuals of both
sexes, and the importance of their right selection for the transmission
of their characters to the future, are clearly before the minds of those
who think at all on these subjects. On various occasions I have raised
this issue between Feminism and Eugenics, suggesting that there are
varieties of feminism, making various demands for women which are
utterly to be condemned because they not merely ignore eugenics, but are
opposed to it, and would, if successful, be therefore ruinous to the
race.
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